From Dischan Media, creators of the highly acclaimed Juniper's Knot, comes Dysfunctional Systems: Learning to Manage Chaos. Dysfunctional Systems is a visual novel series featuring Winter Harrison, a student mediator from a utopian world. Learning to Manage Chaos is the first entry in the series. What is a mediator?

About This Game

Dysfunctional Systems is a visual novel series featuring Winter Harrison, a student mediator from a utopian world. Learning to Manage Chaos is the first entry in the series.

What is a mediator? A mediator is someone who travels to chaotic worlds, attempting to resolve the issues plaguing them. The first entry in the series follows Winter's second mediation, where she shadows the experienced and aloof mediator: Cyrus Addington.

Dysfunctional Systems: Learning to Manage Chaos features two distinct endings, unlockable bonus art, an animated opening video, and a jukebox of in-game music.

What is a visual novel?

A visual novel is a mix of choose your own adventure books, comics and manga, music, and animation. Play through the story and make choices for the main character to change the outcome of the episode and the events of future episodes!

Soundtrack Included

All Steam purchases of Dysfunctional Systems: Learning to Manage Chaos include the official soundtrack absolutely free! Enjoy a total of 18 tracks, including a full rendition of the Dysfunctional Systems opening theme, in both MP3 and FLAC. The album is included with the game files. To access, right click the "Dysfunctional Systems" entry in your library, click "properties", then go to the "local files" tab, and click the "browse local files" button.

I just finished this first episode and I must say it was absolutely fantastic! It's been a long time since a VN I've played had a story that was so engaging and held my interest so much. I mean, the art is very well done, the music is excellent and the story itself is something that's rather unique and it was very well written to top everything off.

I could go on and on about how great this visual novel is. But like others, I can't, in good conscience, recommend anyone purchase this game.

You see, after finishing this first episode, I raced to the forums to see when I could expect the next installment to show up. Alas, I found the message, dated over a month ago, stating that Dysfunctional Systems was no more and that future episodes would most likely not see the light of day. I still hold a small hope for that one miracle to happen though.

So, while you may feel free to ignore my (and others') non-recommendation and purchase this game, you will still be receiving an excellent piece of writing and an excellent game in general. Just don't expect any more, at least for the time being.

The sad irony of Dysfunctional Systems: Learning to Manage Chaos, is it comes so very close to standing alone but in a last minute effort, fully commits to setting up more episodes we’re all but certain never to see.

Let’s back up for a moment though. Dysfunctional Systems is a visual novel following Winter and Cyrus, who play the part of mediators: peace keepers of sorts to the different distant worlds surrounding their own. It’s their job to step in when things become too extreme, and ensure a world doesn’t destroy itself in acts of war.

Learning to Manage Chaos then, is Winter training to learn how exactly someone is capable of keeping a world in check, especially in times of extreme turmoil. If anything though, this is more the story of Winter growing as a person than a mediator, her naivety and innocence being tested as she’s thrown into situations where there is no right decision and not everyone is going to come out alive.

It’s not uncommon for authors to craft ignorant protagonists or side characters so as to have an easy stepping off point for relaying important details to the reader, which characters should likely already know, but Dysfunctional System manages to very rarely fall into that trap of artificial stupidity. Winter feels authentic in her cluelessness about the larger world, being only fourteen but having her heart in the right place. Her actions and ways of thinking are often flawed, but her internal indecision and discomfort of wrestling between what she believes is right and what she’s being told is logical feel very relatable and sincere. She’s been living a life in a pristine society, where the concept of war is difficult to even imagine, so being flung into a far less peaceful and sustainable world comes at more than a small shock.

Cyrus, her mentor, is the counterpoint to Winter’s pleas for peaceful discussion and her fear at wandering into a world she doesn’t understand. He’s calculating and experienced, but also cold and seemingly worn down by the things he’s had to do for the sake of keeping worlds alive. His discussions with Winter are often full of frustration, but the glimpses of understanding that poke through give him the feeling of more than just an old, mean-spirited teacher. He’s smart and recognizes that Winter isn’t prepared for the role of a mediator, but he wants to ensure she gains the experience needed, which even if uncomfortable isn’t anything like what she’ll eventually have to face.

Most of Learning to Manage Chaos takes place between only these two characters, and the back and forth between them is surprisingly compelling. Their dialogues can get heated, but developer Dischan Media does a fantastic job leveraging this between brief moments of humor (such as Winter trying her first bear) to create a very personal, relatable feeling to every interaction. The core plot holds no great weight in all of this, being a tool to spark conversation but without much depth in and of itself, but it’s a short outing that manages a great amount of character development before then closing in a scene that while not perfectly finite, feels complete.

But then the screen comes back and here is where Dysfunctional Systems unfortunately suffers as at the time the first episode was being developed it was still believed future episodes were on the way. The fact is that development has been put on perpetual hiatus, dying after internal troubles caused the project to fall through and any hope of seeing the series completed along with it. This wouldn’t factor in nearly as heavily to Learning to Manage Chaos if it wasn’t for the extended epilogue that comes after the credits. It’s a series of exchanges which don’t exactly propel the plot forward, but leave it in an awkward state of uncompleted development. It disrupts the finality the episode originally ends with, and itself feels rather unpolished, with an abundance of useless dialogue and very limited artwork (most of the epilogue takes place in a sort of text only terminal)

So there’s the clincher. Dysfunctional Systems is an engaging visual novel, with a wonderful art style and a brilliant score, but it’s a story you have to commit at the start to being left hanging with. It’s hard for me to say then if I recommend giving it a chance. I’m caught between my enjoyment of what it is, and disappointment at what it will never become. It’s a weird place to find a game, and it’s not a judgement call I’d be able to make for anyone else.

It's a short game for sure, but the game introduces a lot of nifty concepts about the world of "Dysfunctional Systems". Get it for the story as well as the anticipated sequel to this. Recommended to get it in a bundle since its around 1-2 hours long.

This game is an interactive book but there isn't a lot of interacting until one part of the game, the rest is just reading a lot. But the outcome of the story depends on what you choose at that one point in the game where you actually get to choose how it all plays out. The graphics are anime looking and the story is clever and well done. I really enjoyed this game and all it had to offer. I beat it a couple of times to get all the achievements and to see how many different ways the story can play out differently. if you grinded through the story with alot of clicks or using a macro you can easily get all the achievements in about 30 minutes easily. I really liked this book. I highly recommend getting this game if you would like a good read.